Police chief appoints new commander to oversee traffic division

Usually, when a longtime city worker is transferred to a post at the airport, it means they did something wrong and will never be heard from again.

Police Chief Greg Suhr said that is absolutely not the case with Commander Mikail Ali who has been transferred from running the traffic division to, yup, the airport. Suhr said Ali did “a great job” overseeing the department’s response to Vision Zero, the citywide plan to reduce traffic fatalities to zero by 2024 and pointed to the slight dip in pedestrian fatalities from 2013 to 2014. (They went from 21 to 17.)

“What do they say? Numbers don’t lie,” Suhr said. “He did a good job.”

But let’s just say pedestrian and bicyclist advocates are not exactly crying over Ali’s move. They said he did a good job increasing the number of citations officers give for traffic violations, but failed to ensure the citations were aligned with the department’s “Focus on Five campaign” which is supposed to specifically target the five most dangerous traffic violations. (Those are speeding, running red lights, blowing through stop signs, violating pedestrians’ right-of-way in crosswalks and failing to yield when turning.)

Nicole Schneider, director of Walk San Francisco, said some of Ali’s comments came across as blaming people for their own deaths and abdicating the city’s responsibility for making the streets safer and enforcing traffic rules.

“We know that individuals have a really important part to play, but we also need to create an environment that is safe for individuals,” she said.

Suhr said he was aware of the advocates’ complaints about Ali’s choice of words, but said that had nothing to do with his transfer.

“There were times when they wished he would have said things differently,” Suhr said. “But I look at results, and Mikail did a really great job.”

Commander Ann Mannix, who previously served as captain of the Northern Station and headed the Tactical Company, will replace Ali. Ali did not return a call for comment.